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5 Key Microblogging Strategies for Finance Corporation

It is not easy to convince business owners that microblogging as an effective approach for direct communication with customers. Yet many businesses which participate in microblogging community cannot effectively utilize its nature and generate better outcome for not only marketing purpose, but also building positive customer relationships.

Microblogging platform like Twitter has the following advantages as a channel for delivering messages:

Instant: Through the real-time updating feature, information can be widely spread in no time

Concise: Without time spending on reading the whole article, users can grab the key information within 140 (or less) words

Huge user base: The active community among users can effectively spread out the information globally.

Before we jump to the microblogging strategies for finance institutes such as banks, let’s take a look at what challenges do they face, and how can microblogging help.

Theenhancement of microblogging strategies can provide effective solution to the challenges related to client relationship building and management as social media tools have been widely utilized as an approach for business to directly interact with customers.

Those challenges include:

Addressing the Rise in Buy-Side Power

Managing Capital and Collateral Intelligently

Valuing Client Relationships, Not Product Profits

… where social media tools can be of great help for meeting the third challenge.

And here is the survey about why customers change banks retrieved from Enrst & Young:

The Top 3 reasons are: High fees or charges, poor rates on accounts and poor branch experience.

So how can microblogging help for banks which would like to stop losing customers or, attract more potential customers? Here are 5 practical strategies:

Content is still the KING: customers can easily distinguish marketing purpose posts and informative ones. Pushing though provoking byte-sized content is the only way to encourage active feedbacks. Properly using questions to invite discussion about new product idea, improvement or suggestions. Check my previous post about how CitiBank successfully built up active social media community with quality contents.

Follow your competitors: Microblogging provides a platform for businesses to monitor and interact even with your competitors. It is encouraged to observe the interaction between successful corporation and their followers on microblogging platform since it works as a good channel for market search.

Sharing is caring: If you see your competitors or other microbloggers post something which is really worth a read, share it. Using the feature like re-tweet on Twitter can easily pass on the valuable contents without hassle. Once the audience get to know that you provide not only beneficial posts for your company, but also including related informative contents from other competitors, it might give followership a boost. When it comes to retention, customers care more about what you tweet than who you are.

Link back to your products, but not too often: When microblogging about something which can relate to your products or service, insert a tinyURL into the content to direct customers to them. Try to make the contents inviting and informative instead of pushing or exaggerated.

Integrate with other social media tools: Each social media platform provides different character and advantages for business owners to utilize, but make sure that you do the assessment of market research before jumping on it. Publishing appropriate contents on each platform in regard of different user expectation will never get you wrong.

In the era of enterprise 2.0, is it possible for competitors to create a win-win situation through embracing information sharing or transparency on social media? What would happen if business starts to share and distribute competitors’ marketing contents?

One classmate shared an interesting article about Contour intended to slam on SONY facebook with its release of new competitive camera, but it turned out to be offering free promotion and exposure of SONY’s products, to Contour’s followers. If Contour used another approach, such as positively mentioning about the competitive advantages of its own product, would the result be different?

I like how you’ve described how finance institutions can use microblogging to connect with customers. i’d like to see the bank and insurance companies I know use microblogging as part if their service delivery, for example, if they exposed some of the process through twitter … Eg during an event such as a flood or cyclone they might share information about how busy the queues are, or where to find local assessors, or before a hailstorm they might tweet a warning to move cars indoors. Really good post!

Hey Amanda 🙂
Thanks for your valuable feedback 🙂
You have illustrated a very essential point about sharing information which is valuable and close to customer’s life, by which the contents of microblogging will not solely be business or marketing related, and truly meet customer’s need.
The information and message that we receive through social media platforms every day is tremendous and most of them will be left out after skimming. So how to make the content and information worth a read is relatively crucial when vying with other financial institutions on microblogging platforms.

In my opinion, micro-blogging will gradually become mainstream style in the future. People do not need to write a lot of characters in post. Besides, corporations will easier get competitors dynamic information. Consequently, micro-blogging is useful in corporation development.

Hey Rick 🙂
Thanks for stopping by and sharing your thought!
Even microblogging does have the unique character of instant interaction, viral distribution and concise contents, however, a well-structure blog post will still be essential for organizations to deliver more complex and complete ideas. It is true that more and more bloggers tend to shift their focus to microblogging due to the fact that it is an easier and convenient way to share thoughts and ideas without plotting a whole article. I believe it is good for news update, instant announcement or other time-sensitive contents while typical blog post still plays an important role in message distribution.
Cheers

Well-researched post Edie. From the survey you shared, poor branch experience and poor call centre experience is one of the top 5 reasons why customer change banks. I agree that micro-blogging can be used to connect with customers and hopefully retain them. Customers are also moving towards internet banking these days, so micro-blogging will be an added benefit to service those customers.

Since nowadays customers (especially young generation) are turning onto internet banking or mobile banking applications, I think it will be beneficial if financial institutions can further enhance their relationship with customers through microblogging since it has the unique nature of instant response and concise information delivered. Despite the marketing purpose, microblogging can also function as a channel for updating important news or maintenance announcement, technology support or online enquiry.

Twitter is a powerful tool for microblogging. I agree with yours strategies for microblogging. When you want to tell your audiences about your product, it could be information about new one. Your customers will want to know your new products and sometimes detail information about it. Twitter will be flood with information so the audiences that don’t want to know about it can just simply ignore that message but if what you tweet is only your product then surely they will un-follow you since your tweet is not what they want.

Thanks for you feedback!
I highly agree with your idea that solely marketing contents will lead to low followership and readership since we experience the information explosion everyday, and thus how to curate the information that we would like to gain is very essential. It is human nature that if we will reject a pushy salesman who tries to stop you in the middle of the street and persuade you into buying his products. Same for online marketing, we choose to follow valuable, meaningful or simply something that interests us, instead of boring marketing related contents 🙂

Hi Edie
I think micro-blogging has become the popular trend for sharing information with others.As you mention, consistency content is vital part of post and TinyURL is very useful tools for business.well done..^^kiki

Hey Kiki 😀
Thanks for your reply.
Yeah I agree with you that it has good marketing potential to insert tinyURL into the contents and re-direct customers to the products to encourage further buying behavior or simply increase product exposure 🙂
Micorblogging has it unique character for sharing concise and real-time information with its potential viral distribution which may bring about extra benefit which beyond expectation. I believe it is definitely worth a try on creating and maintaining followership with target customers.